The Minister's Charge Part 19

"Oh!" cried Statira. "Well, you _are_ getting along, 'Manda Grier!"

"Well, don't you let yourself be outdone then, S'tira."

"I guess Mr. Barker's good enough for me a while yet," said Statira, and she hastened to add, "The name, I mean," and at this they all laughed till Statira said, "I shall _certainly_ die!" She suddenly recovered herself--those girls seemed to do everything like lightning, Lemuel observed--and said, "No, I ain't goin' to have mine told at all. I don't like it. Seems kind of wicked. I ruther talk. I never _could_ make it just right to act so with the Bible."

Lemuel was pleased at that. Statira seemed prettier than ever in this mood of reverence.

"Well, don't talk too much when I'm gone," said 'Manda Grier, and before anybody could stop her, she ran out of the room. But she put her head in again to say, "I'll be back as soon's I can take this key home."

Lemuel did not know what to do. The thought of being alone with Statira again was full of rapture and terror. He was glad when she seized the door and tried to keep 'Manda Grier.

"I--I--guess I better be going," he said.

"You sha'n't go till I get back, anyway," said 'Manda Grier hospitably.

"You keep him, S'tira!"

She gave Statira a little push, and ran down the stairs.

Statira tottered against Lemuel, with that round, soft shoulder which had touched him before. He put out his arms to save her from falling, and they seemed to close round her of themselves. She threw up her face, and in a moment he had kissed her. He released her and fell back from her aghast.

She looked at him.

"I--I didn't mean to," he panted. His heart was thundering in his ears.

She put up her hands to her face, and began to cry.

"Oh, my goodness!" he gasped. He wavered a moment, then he ran out of the room.

On the stairs he met 'Manda Grier coming up. "Now, Mr. Barker, you're real mean to go!" she pouted.

"I guess I better be going," Lemuel called back, in a voice so husky that he hardly knew it for his own.

XII.

Lemuel let himself into Miss Vane's house with his key to the back gate, and sat down, still throbbing, in his room over the L, and tried to get the nature of his deed, or misdeed, before his mind. He had grown up to manhood in an austere reverence for himself as regarded the other s.e.x, and in a secret fear, as exacting for them as it was worshipful of women. His mother had held all show of love-sickness between young people in scorn; she said they were silly things, when she saw them soft upon one another; and Lemuel had imbibed from her a sense of unlawfulness, of shame, in the love-making he had seen around him all his life. These things are very open in the country. Even in large villages they have kissing-games at the children's parties, in the church vestries and refectories; and as a little boy Lemuel had taken part in such games. But as he grew older, his reverence and his fear would not let him touch a girl. Once a big girl, much older than he, came up behind him in the play-ground and kissed him; he rubbed the kiss off with his hand, and scoured the place with sand and gravel. One winter all the big boys and girls at school began courting whenever the teacher was out of sight a moment; at the noon-spell some of them sat with their arms round one another. Lemuel wandered off by himself in the snows of the deep woods; the sight of such things, the thought of them put him to shame for those fools, as he tacitly called them; and now what had he done himself? He could not tell. At times he was even proud and glad of it; and then he did not know what would become of him. But mostly it seemed to him that he had been guilty of an enormity that nothing could ever excuse. He must have been crazy to do such a thing to a young lady like that; her tear-stained face looked her wonder at him still.

By this time she had told 'Manda Grier all about it; and he dared not think what their thoughts of him must be. It seemed to him that he ought to put such a monster as he was out of the world. But all the time there was a sweetness, a joy in his heart, that made him half frantic with fear of himself.

"Lemuel!"

He started up at the sound of Sibyl Vane's voice calling to him from the dining-room which opened into the L.

"Yes, ma'am," he answered tremulously, going to his door. Miss Vane had been obliged to instruct him to say ma'am to her niece, whom he had at first spoken of by her Christian name.

"Was that you came in a little while ago?"

"Yes, ma'am, I came in."

"Oh! And have you had your supper?"

"I--I guess I don't want any supper."

"Don't want any supper? You will be ill. Why don't you?"

"I don't know as I feel just like eating anything."

"Well, it won't do. Will you see, please, if Jane is in the kitchen?"

Lemuel came forward, full of his unfitness for the sight of men, but gathering a little courage when he found the dining-room so dark. He descended to the bas.e.m.e.nt and opened the door of the kitchen, looked in, and shut it again. "Yes, ma'am, she's there."

"Oh!" Sibyl seemed to hesitate. Then she said: "Light the gas down there, hadn't you better?"

"I don't know but I had," Lemuel a.s.sented.

But before he could obey, "And Lemuel!" she called down again, "come and light it up here too, please."

"I will as soon as I've lit it here," said Lemuel.

An imperious order came back. "You will light it here _now,_ please."

"All right," a.s.sented Lemuel. When he appeared in the upper entry and flashed the gas up, he saw Sibyl standing at the reception-room door, with her finger closed into a book which she had been reading.

"You're not to say that you will do one thing when you're told to do another."

Lemuel whitened a little round the lips. "I'm not to do two things at once, either, I suppose."

Sibyl ignored this reply. "Please go and get your supper, and when you've had it come up here again. I've some things for you to do."

"I'll do them now," said Lemuel fiercely. "I don't want any supper, and I sha'n't eat any."

"Why, Lemuel, what is the matter with you?" asked the girl, in the sudden effect of motherly solicitude. "You look very strange, you seem so excited."

"I'm not hungry, that's all," said the boy doggedly. "What is it you want done?"

"Won't you please go up to the third floor," said Sibyl, in a phase of timorous dependence, "and see if everything is right there? I thought I heard a noise. See if the windows are fast, won't you?"

Lemuel turned and she followed with her finger in her book, and her book pressed to her heart, talking. "It seemed to me that I heard steps and voices. It's very mysterious. I suppose any one could plant a ladder on the roof of the L part, and get into the windows if they were not fastened."

"Have to be a pretty long ladder," grumbled Lemuel.

"Yes," Sibyl a.s.sented, "it would. And it didn't sound exactly like burglars."

She followed him half-way up the second flight of stairs, and stood there while he explored the third story throughout.